


I Left Her in the Sand

by WeaverofDreams



Category: Fantasy - Fandom, Soundgarden (Band)
Genre: Fantasy, Lesbian Character, Mummies, Queer Themes, Trans Male Character, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 13:57:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19021339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeaverofDreams/pseuds/WeaverofDreams
Summary: An ekphrasis story inspired by Soundgarden's music video for "Burden in My Hand". Hazel travels to the desert in search of her soul, only to discover that it has been her denial of self that has caused her to lose it.





	I Left Her in the Sand

April’s words sift through Hazel’s mind like the billowing sands of the desert that lay about her: dry, coarse, and burning. “Being a mummy isn’t a good thing,” she had said. “All it’ll do is dry you out and leave you a withered corpse. If you’re not careful, you’ll lose your soul.”  
You don’t know me, April, Hazel had wanted to say. It’s the only way I can be safe. Besides, you’re not the first to say that. But all she had done was nodded and stole into their room where the shadows were less intense.  
She pulls her facial wrappings over her eyes to shield them against the drifts of sand. The sun beats heavily on her weathered embalmings, its rays piercing through them and harsh grains of sand digging into their crevices as she trods the glimmering dunes. It’s somewhere around here, she thinks to herself. She knows it is because she can feel it buried somewhere in this desert. She’s been searching for days and despite her innate sense of its location, she still hasn’t reached it.  
At the peak of the next dune, she surveys the land for any signs of something different or new, but there’s hardly anything to see; just waves of sandy ocean rolling off into a mirage of greens, blues, and a peculiarly dark shade of magenta that meets the horizon with a cool tranquility that taunts her as she bakes in an orange haze. She pushes forward through the wind that feels like fire, cursing her mother, her ‘girlfriend’ April, and every man with whom she’d slept. The last man she let crawl between her sheets was a stout, angry, one-night-stand, but that was over three years ago. His bite was vicious and left marks that lasted for days, and beneath the sweaty, panting weight of her covers, he tore her wrappings to shreds with his claw-like nails. He is the only person who has ever seen her, her soul, to this day- that is, besides her parents. Nobody else has ever had the chance to look at her; but he did, and she swore to hate him the most out of all her lovers for it. He saw her and she saw his face fall. He was the only one who left before morning came, and she laid there on a heap of her ripped wrappings, naked and exposed to the shadows, bereft of feeling.  
The sand shatters beneath her feet into a sea of scattered shells and bone. The smell of death is absent in the arid desert air, but the dusty stares of the bovine skulls echo their stories stronger than the repugnant odor of decay ever could. Lost, separated from the herd, they wandered astray into this damned, waterless land only to die. If she does not drink soon, she will join them. She moistens her tongue with the few drops of water that remain in her plastic water bottle.  
It’s so hot… I can’t focus. Her line of sight fogs over with the waves of heat rising through the air, and across the field of bones, a figure walks towards her. She cries out to it, but as it approaches, the features become more defined: it’s a tall, thin figure in dark business-like clothes, and soon she recognizes it as her mother. She grits her teeth and takes a step back. “Mom,” she says. “I didn’t expect to see you out here.”  
“You never expect to see me,” she replies. Her teeth glint white in the desert light, her long neck holds her head high above Hazel’s, and her dark eyes look on her with a menacing force. Hazel’s exhaustion and her mother’s black stare bring her to her knees under her mother’s shadow.  
“You lost it, didn’t you?” she hisses. “I told you and so did all your friends. Look at you now, soulless and empty.” Her voice breaks as she says this.  
“I tried-” Hazel chokes. “I tried so hard to weave my embalmings into my soul-”  
“You weren’t supposed to be a mummy in the first place! I want my Hazel back. My Hazel, who never cocooned herself and hid from the world.” A tear splashes onto her head, and she hears her mother’s whimpers, threatening sobs. Nothing weakened her like her mother’s disappointment, her expectations for her.  
“You don’t understand… I’m not your anything,” Hazel growls, trembling.  
“What?” she gasps. “You’re my daughter, if nothing else.”  
“Not even that,” she says. She feels the defiance and anger rising within her chest. She uses her newfound strength to stand, and when she raises her head to look her mother in the eye, she’s gone. She looks around, bewildered, but she’s nowhere to be seen, and all she can guess is that her mother was a mirage.  
Hazel’s mother’s always been this way. Angry, expectant, and, worst of all, assuming. As she moves forward, memories come flooding back to her. There were times, of course, when wearing dresses and skirts was necessary for whatever it was that they were doing, but not every day. She liked dressing in t-shirts and jeans, not only because they were comfortable, but she felt more at home in them. Skirts felt strange and revealing to her. If she told April any of this, she can already hear her say “Just embrace it. I might be a witch, but I know my fashion, and you would look so sexy in a little frilly skirt.” She doesn’t understand, though. Hazel hated them- still hates them- with such a passion that she took sheets from her closet and wrapped herself in them entirely. That way, no matter what it was that they made her wear, no matter how naked she had to be, or whatever else might expose her, she wouldn’t be seen. She covered every inch of her soul and swore to never let anyone see it again. But that didn’t mean that she was free.  
She remembers a specific day in her later childhood, before the wrapping, when a boy named Robert asked her to go to a dance. Her stomach flipped, she felt the need to puke. Every gut in her body twisted and squirmed in rebellion; but, against every part of herself, she said she’d love to go with him. Of all the boys in the school, he was fairly pretty, so she figured she could put up with his appearance. Maybe she’d even just pretend he was some girl friend of hers.  
“I know his mother,” her mother said. “You should go in a pretty dress. You know how people like them are about appearances.”  
“I know… It’s just that... I want to be the strong one. I want to lead the dancing.”  
“You can lead in a dress. Just watch your father and me sometime. He wouldn’t know how to take the lead in a dance if it was for his life. And again, they’re high-class people, Hazel. I think they’re expecting you to wear something- well, appropriate.  
She let out a sigh. “Maybe.”  
That night was humiliating. Robert looked nothing like a girl up-close, which figured, she supposed, and his masculinity was impossible to ignore when he grabbed her and pulled her body against his. His breath stank, his greasy, sweaty face was too close to hers, and she felt ashamed; and for reasons she still doesn’t know, she was jealous. What she envied in him, she could hardly guess, but she felt it the most intensely when she looked at his square, set features, his broad shoulders, his narrow waist. She left long before the dance was over.  
She’d stayed in her room for the following week, refusing to leave for school or food or anything else. The world had turned dark to her, the shadows longer, and she had trouble just getting out of bed. No matter the time of day, the shadows seemed to reach out and grab at her, and she retreated under the covers, where it’s too dark for shadows. In the suffocating blackness, she realized that she could carry this protection with her anywhere she went and keep the shadows away forever. So she summoned the strength to tear the sheets off of her and run to her closet where she took out some of her old bed sheets and cut them into strips, wrapping them about herself from head to toe. She left only a small slit for her eyes, where she could pull the cloth down if the shadows came too close again.  
He, she thinks to herself. I know he’s here, my soul, ‘cause there aren’t any shadows in the desert either, and I’m getting close.  
The sun crawls across the sky like a dung beetle, its rays the legs of a horrible insect whose bite is filled with a vengeful venom. As Hazel staggers through the wasteland, the sky and the sand become a swirling blur and she knows that she will collapse into the coarse earth if she doesn’t find water soon. A tree stands in a valley about a mile from where she stands, and even through the chaos of her nauseous vision, she can see it. Trees need water. She runs down to it, only to find that the tree is bare and dry. She digs desperately into the earth at its roots to find water, but the sand keeps sifting between her fingers, falling back into the hole. Soon her swimming vision boils her into a state of capitulation, and the soft earth meets her wrapped face warmly.  
I dream of lightning, thunder- rain  
Out-pouring from the sky  
It washes out the ugly stain  
That curses my torn hide.  
“Get up.”  
Everything is blurry, but strangely cool.  
“I said get up!”  
Fuck off, April. Let me sleep in for once.  
“Pu kcuf eht teg!” Hazel’s lifted to her feet by an unseen force that envelops her body. Her eyes are heavy, and in the half-closed darkness, she can see both the tree and April’s short but authoritative figure before her. Her broad sunhat rests sternly on her blonde head, and the contorted glare on her soft, pale face tells her that she’s angry.  
“What’d I do now? How are you inside the tree?” Hazel asks helplessly. “You’re just a mirage like mom was, aren’t you? Leave me alone.”  
“I’m not actually there with you, mummy-dummy. And I’m not a mirage either. I’m at home, but even though you flew to the desert looking for your soul, I’m still cleaning up your messes. I told you to bring water! Does everything I say just bounce right off of your thick skull? You know, I feel like those wrappings are too tight around your ears. And what-”  
“Water,” she croaks.  
“What?”  
“Water,” she manages again, before feeling herself reeling.  
April lifts her hands and says some words, and a spring erupts from between the tree’s roots and she dives into the little stream mouth-first. The water cascades over her tongue and she feels it washing the dust off the walls of her throat. It flows into her stomach and into her veins, filling her body with deep roots of life-giving energy that permeate every crumbling corner of her body. The world stabilizes, her vision becomes clear, and she manages to stand upright.  
“Now, better?” she asks, her hands on her hips.  
“Yes, thank you so much April. You saved me.” She smiles at her, even though she no longer sees her. “You still there?”  
“Of course, Hazel,” she sighs, and Hazel imagines the way she lets down her arms in relief. “If you need me, I’m always here. Sometimes I’m gonna be busy, but, you know what I mean.”  
“I miss you.”  
There is no answer to that one. Just silence. She stands facing the tree, in its shadow, its bare limbs spread out like a spider web, catching the colors of the ember horizon in its tangles of silhouetted branches that appear thread-like against the setting sun. April, I wish you could actually be here. Maybe you’d understand if you saw it. They’d been together for a year and a half, but living together wasn’t getting easier. Sure, Hazel left dishes out sometimes and maybe wouldn’t go out on weekends, but April wasn’t perfect either. Was any of that worth throwing their relationship away? And when it came to talking about her soul, how her soul was a man, April would just change the subject.  
They met in a place where shadows meet to forget they’re shadows. It was called Delilah’s, a little nightclub near her work. Hazel wasn’t very drunk, but she used that later as her excuse for why she had become so grabby with April. It didn’t matter anyway, April didn’t seem to mind. She kept doing magic tricks with the shot glasses. There was blue light. “It’s kinda sucky that this is what my magic’s come to. Just something to attract attention,” April had said. That night wasn’t the first time she’d had sex with another woman either, but it was the best, and somehow Hazel had convinced her to stay.  
The tree’s shadow stretches towards her, but before she can move out of its grasp, a loud CRACK! rings out over her head and she feels the shadow grip her leg. A bolt of lightning explodes from the clear twilight skies and strikes the tree with a godly wrath, and the tree becomes a dancing shadow within a mass of flames. She can do nothing but stand in awe of its violent and sudden destruction. The smoke reaches up into the black portion of sky, and the embers that rise with it join the growing number of stars.  
“You found me,” says a voice from behind the tree. The flames warp and bend on themselves until they, the smoke, and the tree itself collapse into a human shape. Even in the dying daylight, she sees the features of the stranger clearly. He looks like her, only a man.  
“My name is Harry, but I’m sure you know who I am already.”  
“Yeah, you’re my soul,” she just knew this. She didn’t have to ask, because she felt it.  
He stands in the ashes of the tree, his fists clenched at his sides.  
“Why did you hide me? Are you ashamed of me? Or are you afraid?” asks Harry.  
“I was all those things. But, I’m here now, and I’ve come to take you back with me.”  
“I can never go back. The darkness is too much for me. Leave me here, and go! Rot away like the mummy you are, but do it without me. I’m not going back.”  
“No, please, I’ve- I’ve learned my lesson. My life is empty! I can’t enjoy anything anymore,” Hazel pleads.  
“You should have thought about that before you threw me away. I left for this desert so you could never find me, so you couldn’t torture me anymore.”  
“I promise I’ll take off my wrappings. I’ll do it right now! I’ll tear these embalmings off my body and let you become one with me, just please, come back.”  
“You were afraid of change, you were afraid of everything being different. You didn’t want to disappoint your mother, you didn’t want to lose the protection you felt in the presence of lovers, and you didn’t want to lose the one person you actually loved. I can’t come back now, though. You’ve lied for so long that I just can’t.”  
They stand in silence, the chill of oncoming night settling over them. Hazel lowers her head to stare at the ground. Harry, standing still, glares at Hazel for a while before his gaze softens.  
“There is one thing I can do, though,” he says quietly.  
He reaches out to her, and, taking hold of a loose tissue on her head, pulls at it and peels it off. It hangs loosely on the side of her head, and slowly she feels her embalmings start to release their constricting grasp on her body. “Go,” he says. She turns away and walks through the freezing night, leaving a trail of her weathered embalmings in the sand behind her. With every bit of tissue that he leaves behind, he feels Harry more strongly in him, and Hazel, a mere corpse, lies buried in the desert upon a pile of ashes.


End file.
